3 Ring Binder

This was my moment of inspired genius this vacation. Instead of the leftover fluffy beach reading usually found in a summer rental, I thought I'd leave a little something of substance for the next person. When I realized that the only reading material around was a bunch of golf magazines, I had an epiphany of sorts and snugged Atlas Shrugged in right next to the Bible in the bedside table. If the Gideons can do it, the least I can do is offer a rational alternative. By the way, I am finding Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence confusing and unenjoyable but I must finish it. This could mean that I will not read any other novel for many months. I get that way. The only novel in the recent past that I just had to give up on was Aristotle Detective by Margaret Doody and that was a few years ago. Someday I may go back to it (mysteriously, I seem to have temporarily misplaced it), but I had stalled trying to read it for months and refused to start anything new! I should probably...

Vacation was fun, but I like being home. I guess I'm just boring that way. There was plenty of sun, sand, salt water kisses, family, food, and fun. Maybe it was the lack of tutus and tiaras. Now we're all experiencing a slight vacation hangover and need to rest. It's a good thing we have a few days before work and school.

like big hair, and waterskiing with tiaras and tutus! Actually, the first few notes and base line of this song scream it to me. Enjoy!

I just wanted to share this lovely old traditional Scottish song as performed by James Taylor with help from the Boston Pops. Thanks to The Bonny Glen for the reminder.

Je ne parle pas Francaise, mais j'essaie. Hier soir, j'ai parle avec la femme qui guardes mon fils quand il etait a France. Si cette est difficile pour vous lire, imaginez-vous comment difficile il etait pour la femme pauvre me comprends! Ah, Francais de la college etait de plus nombreuses annees. (My sincerest apologies to those of you who can actually speak or read French.) In honor of the feisty woman who played the role of my son's mother in France, and who, without speaking 10 words of English (really) has managed to travel to America for the first time in her life, alone, no less, and who loves Marilyn Monroe (said something nasty about President Kennedy, but my French, she is not so good) and who I met only yesterday, I offer my favorite picture of Marilyn. [I bought this poster to hang in our basement gym to inspire me, but have yet to be inspired to find the right sized poster frame to hang it. That's a problem. ] Today's Word of the Day is ambisinister . E...

As the weather gets cooler, I’m gearing up for my favorite time of year - the fall. Early in the season, after the chaos of September, we hit a much appreciated long weekend with the Monday holiday named after Christopher Columbus: the man who brought Western Civilization to the Americas. Lena Horne sings Gershwins' How Long Has This Been Going On Ginger Rogers sings (and BONUS, dances with Fred Astaire to) Gershwins' They All Laughed I thank my ten year-old for pointing out how much the Gershwins admired Christopher Columbus, but I fear for my sophomore who will learn in her American History class this year that Columbus was a murderer and should not be celebrated. I can hope she understands his importance while she listens to his detractors who take the form of her government school teachers. Perhaps she is not too young to read and understand The Enemies of Christopher Columbus by Thomas Bowden. You, gentle reader, are just the right age.

Sometimes, it's a fine line between love and hate. These red rainboots from Dr. Scholl's (!) walk that line.

This weekend I read through an interesting 54 page ebook about sleep ( 40 Sleep Hacks : A Geek’s Guide to Optimizing Sleep). While I have trained myself to wake up at mostly the same time everyday (Bit of Advice #1) I live with someone who still likes to “sleep in” on the weekends (even though he is the one who introduced me to Sleep Hacks, he continues to ignore this bit of advice). Discussing the effects of circadian rhythm , diet, psychology, lucid dreaming and concentrating on different techniques and gadgets of sleep, the guide offers some pretty good food for thought (or sleep as the case may be). I think the phases of sleep and their effects on the waking state warrants more of my attention. Personally, Section III on napping appealed to me most and I recommend it highly (napping, not necessarily Section III). What was very unsatisfying about the guide is that it absolutely cannot apply to mothers of young children – you know who you are: the woman who still needs to keep her e...

Any given Sunday morning: Lounging in bed with my coffee and computer – both brought to me by my manservant, I hear the dog whine softly. I hear dog yelp loudly. I know that dog has whizzed in her crate. Deciding it’s time to actually leave the cocoon (manservant doesn’t do the dog-thing unless under duress. It’s like the diaper-thing: “No! You won’t have to change the diapers” until you do ) I head for the pee zone. Getting the dog out of crate, not really later than usual, she just doesn’t like to hear happy voices that don’t include a copious amount of praise and petting for her (and, really, who can blame her), I bring eight to ten paper towels to wipe off her pee-paws and wipe up the pee puddle she left in the crate. I use another four to six to swipe Just Try To Get The Urine Smell Out pet cleaner in and around the crate and floor (pee jettisoned from the patented “Pug shake” and where the initial pee-paws had fallen as she left the crate). Then I take her out to encourage any r...

I understand the connection between the driving beats and the pop and lock moves, but Snoop Dogg? Really? I’m afraid so, Snoop Dogg goes to Bollywood . I hate to see the colorful and celebratory song and dance fest become gangsta-rized. I hope this is a blip rather than a trend.

Freedom to practice religion is a basic right of any person in this country and as such, is protected by law. Likewise, the demonstrable violation of property rights is punishable by law. It is through objective laws which protect our individual rights that our government was designed to function and to the idea of which (i.e. freedom ) Americans pay great lip service. Sadly, instituting government force to wrest sovereignty from the individual using the tactics of guilt and fear is not new; however, it is the sum total of what the unholy marriage of our nominally opposing political parties currently offers us. The metaphorical backbend of the statists that bridges the New Left and the Religious Right must expose the unsound altruistic foundations of both. As aptly demonstrated above by Aussie gymnastics’ adorable answer to Carol Merrill , total collapse is desirable. In order to gain some insight into the false premise and destructive nature of the environmental movement, I recommen...

While I didn’t exactly go a-black-berrying, I did go outside and look at berries. I looked at flowers and the leaves, at the twigs, at the mushrooms, the stems, and the grasses, ferns and fruit. I looked at lots of stuff all within my front or backyard. I even took pictures of most of them. And, what’s more, I aim to identify them all as part of my new effort, the 100 Species Challenge . When I first read about it on Rockhound Place , I got a little itchy just thinking about all that “outdoor time”. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought “what a great little homeschool project for me and the wee lass” ( I tried to decipher Robert Burns Address to a Haggis this morning to no avail; the imagined accent still lingers however ). Here is our attempt at the 100 Species challenge. Drop by anytime and let me know if our identification is mistaken. Once upon a time, I was quite proficient at using a dichotomous key for plant identification, but I think it’s going to be a while b...

As I mentioned elsewhere, I’m reading Katherine by Anya Seton. I am really enjoying this historic fiction about the real love affair between John of Gaunt and Lady Katherine Swynford in 14th century England. Despite its chivalric subject matter and foreword by Phillippa Gregory (good foreword by the way, I just couldn’t get past page 70 of Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl ) it’s not a bodice ripper, but an interesting, informative, and most of all, engrossing story. The familial connections in the story are fantastic in themselves, not to the mention the historic background of the Hundred Years War, the plague, stirrings of the Reformation, and the Peasants’ Revolt. At one point, in describing Geoffrey Chaucer’s distraction from the matter before him, Ms. Seton has him say “my mind went a-black-berrying”. The similarities between Chaucer’s expression (which he actually used in his writing) and the symptoms relating to constant use of the eponymous PDA over 700 years later cannot be...

C'mon kids, let's play Horizontal Market Power ! Since the word Monopoly has lost its sexy socialist appeal (the irony of using the word "sexy" right next to "socialist" should not be lost here), and its fallacy well understood, bureaucrats seem to be trying to resurrect the idea. The phrase Horizontal Market Power is used and defined in the Green Communities Act as: a situation in which 1 or a few market participants combined have undue concentration in the ownership of facilities at the same level in the chain of production resulting in the ability to influence price to his or their own benefit. This is not to be confused with the promoted channeling of public utilities* funds and the nudging of the market for the advancement of public interests , protection of the environment , creation of employment opportunities , stimulation of increased public and private investments , stimulation of entrepeneurial activities through regulations (all of which are ...

I was tagged by Shez of Homeschooled Twins by this meme to post six things people don’t know about me. This is not to be confused with six things no one knows about me, because there just aren’t that many things (though I am often happy there is no such thing as thought police). While I’ve hardly been less than forthcoming in this blog, here are a few things about myself which I find amusing and/or interesting and which don’t normally come out in everyday conversation (even with myself): 1. When I was about nine, I told my friends that I was homosexual because I had recently learned that “homo” meant man – as in Homo sapiens and, duh, – everyone knows what “ sexual ” means ( like kissing 'n' stuff ). Putting two and two together - ergo - I was a “homosexual”. I don’t remember who finally disabused of me this notion and told me that “homo” meant "the same" in this usage, but it was certainly not one of my friends who regarded all that I said on matters of “words ...

Beyond the wonder of the strange bedfellows presented in their ads, I lingered on their logo. What a marvelously subtle use of typography in turning the "me" into a "we". That encapsulates things for me very nicely.

I have been “recently chosen as a potential candidate to represent the professional and business community of” my town “in the Biltmore Who’s Who Among Executives and Professional Women and 2008 Honors Edition .” Isn’t that exciting? One problem – okay two: I’m neither an executive nor a professional. At least I am a woman, so that’s something. After it extols my virtues, the letter ends with “on behalf of our Committee I salute your accomplishments.” I love junk mail with a sense of humor. I would have liked to include Steve Martin’s dance of jubilation when he discovers he’s listed in the phone book in The Jerk , but I couldn’t find it.

This is a very cool site from the University of Nottingham. Click on an element and a video featuring a groovy chemistry professor talks about its properties, historic functions, and other cool uses. If you or your kids appreciate the beauty of the periodic table, not to mention mad scientist hair, these are the videos you've been waiting for. Thanks to Home Chemistry blog for sharing.

Reflections on Judy Garland's shoes from "The Wizard of Oz" shown here at the Smithsonian "'When in doubt, wear red.' I think that's good advice." So says my 10 year-old. It was good enough for Dorothy and it's good enough for me.

These are a few of my favorite mugs. I collect coffee mugs. I never intended to do this, but ceramic mugs are texturally appealing to me and completely functional. Combine these attributes with a low price and a display that strikes me as funny, clever, or appeals to my sense of life or feelings of nostalgia and BAM! It’s mug mayhem in the kitchen! When it’s time to cull the stock (those that are chipped, stained, or just don’t otherwise meet my needs any longer), I try to repurpose my favorite ones first. As many others I’m sure have discovered, an unused coffee mug is a perfect place to collect pens, pencils, and other tall/skinny stationery items on one’s desk. However, I have begun to use my coffee mugs to collect all the little things, which belonging nowhere else in particular, I like to have at hand. While I am certainly not commenting on relative importance of the following items, here are the contents of the virtual coffee mug on my mental desk of late: Getting Things Done ....

As a homeschooling parent, I could be referring to reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic, but I’m not – only one of those actually begins with an “R”. I am instead referring to the three types of cardiovascular activity I prefer: running, rolling, and riding. Sure, interesting aerobic classes like cardio kick-boxing and boot camp style can really be quite fun but require me to be in a room with other sweaty people and pay a membership fee for the privilege OR to squirrel myself away in the bowels of my house and growl if anyone approaches my lair as I need extreme concentration to follow the dyslexic chicky-do moves on the video. (Have you ever wondered why all The FIRM video aerobic instructors have southern accents? I’m convinced it’s to add to my confusion about the moves – “ What did she say?”) So, while the weather holds out, I will continue to keep up some level of outdoor aerobic activity. Typically when I run, like today, I run 3 miles. When I rollerblade, as I did on Wednesday, I...

"It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master." Ayn Rand, from the titled essay in For the New Intellectual , as excerpted from The Fountainhead .

Beginning around 10:00 last night, my computer suddenly ceased to be able to open my blog and several others which use the Blogger service. I can get comments, even write posts, I think, but I can't actually make comments (as that would require me to visit the site) or visit some of the other random Blogger sites I've tried. Internet Explorer keeps blurting out an ugly horn sound (I'm sure you're all familiar with it) then posting a red "x" and telling me "operation aborted". I am lucky enough to have access to another machine, but I am frustrated!!!! Is anyone else having this problem, does it at all sound like a familiar problem, or, she asks hopefully, an easy fix? Suggestions other than "get a new machine" are welcomed. Update (one hour later, to be read with Roseanne Roseannadanna accent): Nevermind.

I'm often struck by sudden and random connections between things I see and things I've seen somewhere before (even without wonky eyes ). This is especially true when I look at photographs then images from art and other visual media come screaming out at me. I tried to find some actual examples of pictures that suddenly reminded me of something else I’ve seen. Here are a few, all of which are also connected to the ocean by mere coincidence. The Gorton's Fisherman The Oyster Gatherers Boats at bay Though sometimes amusing (or disturbing), these correlations of visual perceptions require little more than involuntary mental integration and are basically arbitrary. Art , however, is not a mere connection to reality, but rather a stylized representation of reality exhibiting the artist's values: an aesthetic abstraction . For your viewing pleasure, here is a painting by Andre Derain, exhibiting his representation of "Fishing Boats, Collioure", 1905. (By the way, th...